Top Highlights

• junk food noun 1. Pre-prepared or packaged food that has low nutritional value —Oxford English Dictionary
• Jean Nidetch named her company Weight Watchers. NIDETCH’S SOLUTION to weight loss lay in collective willpower. Weight Watchers wasn’t the first diet to push this method.
• People were getting fatter. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in the early 1960s, just 13.4 percent of adult Americans qualified as obese. A decade later, the percentage had ticked up more than a full point to 14.5 percent.
• however, in the ’80s, and by the late ’90s, more than 30 percent of American adults were obese, more than double the early ’60s tally.
• Today, obesity is holding at 35 percent, nearly triple what it used to be.